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The Brain Eaters (1958)

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Guess who's coming to dinner?, 4 novembre 2001
Author: Bruce Cook (brucemcook2@aim.com) da Fayetteville, GA

It's only about 60 minutes long, and the special effects (what little there are) are substandard, but some real imagination went into this one, with a plot based on `The Puppet Masters' by Robert Heinlein. A strange Earth-drilling craft surfaces in a small town and disgorges a horde of fuzzy little parasitic creatures who fasten themselves to the necks of the townsfolk and control their brains. Scientist Ed Nelson (who is also the film's producer) battles the invaders. Watch for a scene in which the hero enters the drill craft and confronts a bearded old man . . . played by Leonard Nimoy!

If you just LOVE 1950s sci-fi, here's an obscure little curiosity for you. If not . . . well, try the Sci-Fi Channel.

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5 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
"I'm here to keep this spaceship business in check." Dull 50's Sci-Fi., 6 giugno 2005

Author: Paul Andrews (poolandrews@hotmail.com) da UK

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The Brain Eaters starts with the newly engaged Glenn Cameron (Alan Frost) driving his lucky fiancé Elaine (Jody Fair) to the small American town of Riverdale in Illinois to break the good news when they see a sudden bright flash. Glenn & Elaine stop to investigate & discover a large metal cone that's 50 feet tall by 50 feet across at it's widest. In Washington Senator Walter K. Powers (Cornelius Keefe as Jack Hill) takes full responsibility & flies out to Riverdale where he is met by Glenn who just happens to be the Mayor's (Orville Sherman) son, Glenn informs Senator Powers that his Father has mysteriously disappeared & there has been 3 unsolved murders in the area recently. Glenn takes Senator Powers to the cone where Dr. Paul Kettering (Ed Nelson), Dr. Wyler (David Hughes) & their assistant Alice Summers (Joanna Lee) are busy running all kinds of tests on the unidentified object. Kettering informs Senator Powers that he is baffled by the cone, eventually they all end up in the Mayor's office who has suddenly reappeared. After some macho rubbish between the Mayor & the Senator about who is in charge the Mayor pulls a gun out & makes a run for it but is shot by a cop. Kettering & a somewhat unemotional Glenn examine the body & discover two holes in the back of his neck. Kettering performs an autopsy & discovers that the Mayor was being controlled by an alien parasite previously unknown to man, Kettering puts two & two together & comes up with the startling theory that these parasites have come from the cone. But since the parasites got to the Mayor who else is being controlled? The mystery deepens even further when an expert in bio-chemistry , Professor Helsingman (Saul Bronson), who has been missing for the past five years turns up out of the blue. Kettering & his team face a race against time to stop the parasites before they take over the entire human race!

Directed by Bruno VeSota The Brain Eaters is nothing to get excited about. The script by Gordon Urquhart supposedly based on Robert A. Heinlein's novel The Puppet Masters fails to make the most of it's obvious potential, the potential for paranoia is wasted. The film makes it perfectly clear who is controlled by a Brain Eater & who isn't. Film's like John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) & Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) brilliantly uses the mistrust between characters to heighten tension & make us, the viewer, question who we should believe & put our faith in. The Brain Eaters has none of this which hurts the film badly as it's very predictable & doesn't even attempt to try & pull any surprises. The dialogue is clunky, awkward, static & feels dated as is often the case with 50's Sci-Fi but there are a few laughs to be had if you listen closely enough. To give it some credit it moves along like a rocket, there's no boring exposition here even going as far as having a few scenes narrated rather than try & condense the information into an ordinary conversation & at only an hour long it doesn't outstay it's welcome. The Brain Eaters themselves are rarely seen & when they are they look like wigs with antenna's. There's no blood, gore or violence & the special effects are generally poor as you would expect. The acting is very wooden & everyone looks & sounds like they're reading their lines from cue cards, & yes Leonard Nimoy does make an appearance even if it's hard to make him out you'll definitely recognise his voice. Director VeSota fails to bring any scares, atmosphere, style or originality to the film as a whole. Overall I thought The Brain Eaters was an OK way to pass an hour but could have been more & at the end of the day fails to distinguish itself from any other 50's black & white Sci-Fi film of which there are many better ones available. One to watch only if your desperate.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Strange visitors come to Riverdale, 31 gennaio 2005

Author: Chris Gaskin da Derby, England

I have seen The Brain Eaters a couple of times and is quite enjoyable, despite the low budget and reading some bad reviews about it. This movie was first released on video in the UK as part of the Drive-In Classics series, of which I own a copy. It has since been re-released on video and now DVD.

A strange alien cone shaped craft of unexplained origin appears in the small town of Riverdale. Some scientists and government officials are sent to investigate the craft and at the same time, some of the local residents start acting strange and then die. All of the people who have died have bite marks on the back of their necks and it turns out these are the work of parasites from the cone. These turn out to be millions of year old aliens who want to rule the world and have been living underground all this time. Some of the people enter the cone and are attack by more parasites and are defeated in the end.

The movie's cast is mostly made up of unknowns, although Ed Nelson has appeared in several drive-in movies of this kind including Attack Of the Crab Monsters and A Bucket Of Blood. Also look out for a then unknown Lenard Nimoy, some years before he played Mr Spock in Star Trek.

This is a worth seeing, especially if you are a fan of 1950's science fiction like me.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

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7 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
The music was not original as claimed., 17 settembre 2006

Author: captnhal da United States

I found this movie amusing for its low budget effects and several flaws in its continuity. The most frequent flaw was the splicing of scenes in which it would appear to be day and then night and back and forth. Despite, or perhaps because of its flaws, I liked it. It does help if you like 1950's "B" sci-fi films and Shostakovich to start with.

In addition to the plot strongly resembling Robert Heinlein's "Puppet Masters", the music was also not original. I could find no evidence that there ever was a "Tom Jonson" who wrote any music for this film or anywhere, ever. Most of it was taken, uncredited, from Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies 1, 5, & 10. I also recognized an excerpt from Sergei Prokofiev's music score for the Russian language film Alexander Nevsky. At the time Brain Eaters was distributed these composers were not as frequently performed in the US and their music would not have been familiar to almost all movie goers. Both composers were from the Soviet Union (Prokofiev died in 1953). They were perceived as Communist and there was a certain amount of prejudice and/or fear about performing it. During the cold war it would also have been difficult for Shostakovich to pursue legal action against the film company if he even knew his music had been used. I suspect this is exactly why this music was used.

I also would not be surprised if it turns out that the source of the performances were records purchased at a record store and the musicians were not compensated either. The credits do not list any orchestra(s)/conductor(s). The editing of the background music was also poorly done. There were several places where the music did not transition smoothly to the next scene or even within the same scene.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Much Better Than Rated, 31 agosto 2002

Author: Space_Mafune da Newfoundland, Canada

A strange seemingly destructible cone-shaped object is found in the town of Riverdale, Illinois. This comes following reports of strange lights in the sky, mysterious deaths and disappearances. Senator Walter K. Powers is sent to investigate and meets the town's scientific research team of Dr. Kettering & Dr. Wyler. Eventually they stumble upon the horrible and unlikely truth of what is the cause behind all of this. This film starts out a bit slow and is hampered by a low-budget but it is however a superb attempt to rise above the limitations of budget in order to tell a fascinating story. Scenes shot through the eyes of the Brain Eaters and featuring the Brain Eaters themselves are surprisingly well done. Really I feel this film is actually quite good.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Brain Music, 9 settembre 2007

Author: Elizabethet da United States

I read your post re: The Brain Eaters. I have done extensive research on the music and have also come to the conclusion that there never was a Tom Jonson. I have identified much of the score but the piece that eludes me is the Main Title. Does anyone have any idea what that's from? Your help would be greatly appreciated. It's driving me crazy.

In the meantime , this is a fun film (if derivative). The biggest mistake might be the Pipe Cleaner antennea on the little monsters. The idea the creatures are subterranian in nature was very different for the period. All in all a good fun romp. The classical score does add a weirdness that somehow compelling.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Decent Sci-Fi, 27 febbraio 2008
Author: MichaelElliott1 da Louisville, KY

Brain Eaters, The (1958)

** (out of 4)

AIP sci-fi about a ground an alien like critters that attach to the neck's of humans of suck their blood out. This is a decent time killer since it runs just over an hour but God knows this isn't the greatest film the genre has to offer. The low budget nature adds a lot to the film and the alien things are actually pretty neat and work well with the small budget. The performances and direction aren't anything to write home about but if you like silly little "B" movies then you might enjoy this one. The film would have worked a lot better without the Dragnet like narration.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
What is it! What happened! What did you kill them for!, 19 gennaio 2008

Author: sol1218 da brooklyn NY

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

**SPOILERS** The only thing new about this aliens from space movie is that the aliens, or as their called in the film parasites, don't come from other space at all they come from deep down in the earths core.

It take's a while for Dr. Paul Kettering, Ed Nelson, and the person put in charge of this pressing matter by the US Department of the Interior Senator Warren K. Powers, Cornelius Keefe,to realize what exactly their up against. These strange brain-eating creatures are in fact 200 million year old amoeba-like brain-suckers who emerged from their home deep down in the earth's crust. The creatures are planning to take over the human race by destroying their victim's brain cells after they took over their bodies. They, the Braineaters, plan to accomplish this feat by first taking over the brains of the unsuspecting humans in the little town of Riverdale. Turning the town's population into mindless zombies the parasites then plan go on to the next town city and then country until the entire human race is no longer a factor or obstacle to their eventual conquest of the earth!

With little money on hand the film "The Braineaters" lacks the very things that would make it worth watching decent, not spectacular , special effects. The "spaceship" that the parasites came from is nothing but a 50 feet tall aluminum tepee with a hole in it's nosecone. The Braineaters themselves are nothing but sponge-like creatures with pipes sticking out of them. These pipes are used to latch on to their victim's necks and then, after taking over their bodies, suck their brains out and cause their victims to die within 24 to 48 hours.

It's after the town chief executive Mayor Cameron, Oville Sherman, flips out and goes bananas and is shot and killed by the police, whom he's in charge off,that Dr. Kettering realized that he was in fact taken over by some strange creature, the underground parasite, who had him do its bidding. Little by little the parasites take over a number of the townspeople including Dr. Kettering's girlfriend Alice Summers, Joanna Lee, making it almost impossible to know who's the good guy or parasite.

It's only when it's discovered that there's a number of persons inside the "spacecraft" that the truth comes out to what exactly is going on. One of the men inside the craft turned out to be Prof. Helsingman, Saul Bronson, who mysteriously disappeared five years ago. Helsingman lived just long enough to tell Dr. Kettering what the real purpose of these strange creatures really is: To take over the earth's surface.

Later going into the craft Dr. Kettering is confronted by the also long missing Dr. Cole, Leonard Nimoy, the late Prof. Helsingman's close friend and associate. Dr. Cole, looking like the old man of the mountain,tells the astonished Dr. Kettering that he and his fellow humans should just lay down their arms and give up, resistance is futile Dr. Cole tells him, to their superiors the parasites.

Of course Dr. Kettering is not at all impressed with Dr. Cole and his army of brain eating parasites and comes up with a fool-proof plan to put them out of business: 60 to 80 thousand volts of electricity. It , Dr. Kettering's plan, was just about to be put into operation when an unexpected glitz developed at the very last moment! The sudden appearance of of girlfriend the brain damaged, and parasite controlled, Alice Summers!

Predictable ending with Dr. Kettering unable to do what he at first planned to do in ridding the earth of the underground parasite invasion. It took the sharp-shooting ability of the late Mayor Cameron's son Glenn, Alan Frost, to in the end finish the job that the reluctant, in not being able to off his parasite-controlled girlfriend Alice, Dr. Kettering was unable to do.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
"The point of origin becomes the point of return.", 14 gennaio 2008

Author: classicsoncall da United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

If you're a fan of cheesy sci-fi flicks from the 1950's, there's no way you can pass on a title like "The Brain Eaters". Truthfully, this wound up pretty interesting, and I'll get into that in a minute. The flick got me hooked with Dr. Kettering's statement after firing his gun into the cone shaped object, which is the basis of my summary line above. It's so basic that it sounds like it might have some usage in actual science, but I've never heard it before. Very clever, but if it were actually true, that bullet would have come back to injure Kettering, so I'm thinking it was all made up.

What really impressed me when the whole story was over was how much integrity the story line maintained. The whole idea of an alien life form searching out a useful host to take over required no more thought than a lot of films of the era did, but showing a dead dog on the way to the site of the cone helped convey the idea that other life forms were tried and discarded; that was pretty unique. The instances where the host humans were shown with bulging backs was also a neat device to allow the viewer to know that danger was imminent, even if the characters on screen were oblivious. So you had some building of suspense that coincided with the modus operandi of the brain eating parasites.

But come on, the best part of all of this was the goofy stuff going on that flew right in the face of real time continuity. Like the alternating day and night time scenes that defy any concept of time management. And how about Senator Powers' mustache, it seemed to come and go from scene to scene! I'm also kind of curious as to the selection of Riverdale as the location of the story, that was also the home of Archie and his pals, but I don't know if their Riverdale was ever mentioned to be in a particular state.

I guess one of the cooler items this film has to offer is future Star Trekker Leonard Nimoy in the role of a professor who disappeared with a colleague five years earlier and had his life form taken over by the aliens. If you don't know he's in the picture, his appearance on screen won't really help since his face is obscured by a beard, but if you listen closely there's no mistaking the voice. I wonder if he was upset that his name was mis-spelled in the credits.

Usually with these kinds of pictures, I'm not willing to rate them much more than a four or a five because really, they are pretty dumb. But with this one, I've got to say that with the hero Kettering sacrificing himself at the finale for the good of all mankind - that's got to be good for at least a bonus point. Look, it's not "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", but for a mere sixty minutes of your time, it's worth at least a single viewing to be able to say - I just watched "The Brain Eaters"!

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
The Brain Eaters, 24 ottobre 2007
Author: Scarecrow-88 da United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Parasitic creatures which attach to the back of their human hosts's necks, leaving vampire-like puncture marks(they also secrete acid)threaten the existence of human-kind and they're believed, at first, to have came from a mysterious cone-shaped capsule found in the country-side on the outskirts of a small town. It's up to scientist Dr. Kettering(Ed Nelson)and Glenn Cameron(Alan Frost)to stop the little leech-like monsters before the populace is overrun by these things. Senator Walter K Powers(Cornelius Keefe), from Washington DC, comes a barking orders to his heroes. The parasites have taken control of the sheriff and telegrapher, with "human agents", carrying orb-tanks with those things inside, working to spread the monsters throughout the town.

Obviously inspired by "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", I did wonder if aspects from this flick were lifted from those who wrote ALIEN. The film isn't too bad, but does leave some connecting stories unanswered, specifically the human agents spreading the creatures and particularly the sheriff who isn't apprehended at any time. Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy has a cameo at the end as a certain human host within the capsule carrying tanks containing several of those parasites.

The film's low budget definitely shows. Those loose ends untied(Powers proclaims the human agents will be apprehended he guarantees, but how can he be so sure?)did leave me rather unsatisfied..but, the little movie did leave me rather entertained. Not a great, or even good, film, but passable as a time-consumer. Popcorn fare, nothing more.

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